(30) MANY of the first settlers came here with their minds filled with doubts as to the worth of this part of the country as a farming region. There was good reason for this feeling of doubt. The country was very fair to look upon and showed a good soil; from the character of the soil, the growth of the vegetation, and the general appearance of the country there seemed to be plenty of evidence that this land would make productive farms. But the testimony of nearly all the early travelers and explorers and geographers was against it.

     Olney's geography was in general use in the schools of the country during the years from about 1845 to 1860. This geography had been studied by many of the first settlers, and some of them who had been teachers had taught it in their schools and had become very familiar with it. It was a standard work. On the map showing the present state of Nebraska, together with all the country between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, north of Arkansas and the Indian Territory, there was printed this legend:

in small capitals, and then beneath this, in Italics:

     "Covered with stinted grass, and inhabited by roving tribes of Indians and vast herds of buffalo."

     Then, to make it more impressive, there was here and there a picture of an Indian on horseback, and of a buffalo.

     Washington Irving, in his "Astoria," Crowell edition, page 162, has this to say: "Apart of their route would lay across an immense tract, stretching north and south for hundreds of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributary streams of the Missouri and (31) Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed the great American desert. It spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains, and desolate and sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where no man permanently abides; for in certain seasons of the year there is no food for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk, and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveler. Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted by mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused masses, with precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines looking like the ruins of a world; or is traversed by lofty and barren ridges of rock, almost impassable, like those denominated the Black Hills. Beyond these rise the stern barriers of the Rocky Mountains, the limits as it were of the Atlantic world. 

     "Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far west, which apparently defies cultivation and the habitation of civilized life. Some portions of it along the rivers may partially be subdued by agriculture, others may form vast pastoral tracts, like those of the East; but it is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the desert of Arabia; and like them, be subject to the depredations of the marauder. Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in geology, amalgamations of the 'debris' and `abrasions' of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of broken and almost extinguished tribes; the descendants of hunters (32) and trappers; of fugitives from Spanish and American frontiers; of adventurers and desperadoes of every class and country, yearly ejected from the bosom of society into the wilderness. We are contributing incessantly to swell the singular and heterogeneous cloud of wild population that is to hang about our frontier, by the transfer of whole tribes of savages from the east of the Mississippi to the great wastes of the far west. Many of these bear with them the smart of real or fancied injuries; many of them consider themselves expatriated beings, wrongfully exiled from their hereditary homes and the sepulchers of their fathers, and cherish a deep and abiding animosity against the race that has dispossessed them. Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who with their flocks and herds roam the plains of upper Asia; but others, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding grounds, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking places."

     Again, Irving's "Bonneville," Crowell edition, page 286, says: "An immense belt of rocky mountains and volcanic plains, several hundred miles in width, must ever remain an irreclaimable wilderness, intervening between the abodes of civilization and affording a last refuge for the Indians."

     Francis Parkman, in his "Oregon and California Trail," A. L. Burt edition, page 57, says: "At length we gained the summit and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We all drew rein, and gathering in a knot on the crest of the hill, sat joyfully looking down upon the prospect. It was right welcome; strange, too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur other than its vast extent, its solitude and its wildness. For league after league a plain as level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us; here and there the Platte, divided into a dozen sluices, was traversing it, and (33) an occasional clump of wood rising in the midst like a shadowy island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing was moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted over the sand and through the thick grass and prickly pear just at our feet. We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey; but four hundred miles still intervened between us and Ft. Laramie; and to reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks. During the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long, narrow, sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the Rocky Mountains. Two lines of sandhills, broken often into the wildest and most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at a distance of a mile or two on the right and left; while beyond them lay a barren and tractless waste - The Great American Desert - extending for hundreds of miles to the Arkansas on one side and the Missouri on the other. Before and behind us the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun an expanse of hot bare sand; sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass."

     These quotations are taken from standard authors. Parkman's observations were made while on the south side of the Platte nearly opposite Grand Island. Irving got his information from Bonneville, Hunt, and dozens of others who had visited this country, and from the manuscripts of the employees of John Jacob Astor. But other authors of less note, and not so well known nor so generally read as Irving and Parkman, speak in the same strain as the quotations already given.

     Edwin Bryant, an author often quoted in Morton's "History of Nebraska," and who in 1846 wrote a book entitled "Rocky Mountain Adventures," says on page 75 of that work: "Our route has been up the Little Blue which runs in a southeast direction. The soil of the bottom appears to be of a fertile composition, but that of the table land or prairie undulations is sandy and gravelly, producing but little grass." On page 76 he says: "The (34) soil of the prairie is thin, and the grass and other vegetation present a blighted and stunted appearance. I did not notice a solitary flower in bloom between the Little Blue and our encampment." And again on page 77 he says: "June 8 - The prairie over which we traveled until we reached the bluffs that overlooked the valley or wide bottom of the Platte is a gradually ascending plain. The soil is sandy, and the grass is short and grows in tufts and small bunches. I saw no flowers." After entering the Platte valley, he says: "The soil near the river appears to be fertile, but next to the bluffs it is sandy, and the grass and other vegetation present a stunted and blighted appearance. Small spots in the bottom are covered with a white efflorescence of saline and alkaline substances combined."

     The country referred to by Bryant in the foregoing quotations lies in the counties of Thayer, Nuckolls, Clay, Adams, and Hall, which are now considered to be among the good counties of the state.

     Another writer, Rufus B. Sage, who visited this country in 1841 and who spent three or four years west of the Missouri River, and who wrote a book called "Adventures in the Rocky Mountains," thus gives his general opinion of the worth of this part of the country. On page 60 he says: "That this section of the country should ever become inhabited by civilized man, except in the vicinity of large water courses, is an idea too preposterous to be entertained for a single moment."

     It was generally admitted by authors, travelers, and explorers that a narrow strip along the Missouri, and extending a short distance west up the valleys of its principal tributaries, was fertile, but that the country as a whole was a vast semi-sterile tract, wholly unfit for cultivation.

     When the writer landed with his family in Omaha, in May, 1867, the second state legislature was in session, the state having been admitted to the Union on the first of of the preceding March. One of the members of this legislature, hailing from the South Platte country, advised the writer to settle south of the Platte River, saying that (35) "There are not over two thousand inhabitants north and west of Washington County, and that the country is too poor and worthless to support a dense population." Another man who had visited the Elkhorn valley country informed him that the country was pretty good as far west as the sixth principal meridian, but west of that it was sandy and poor.

     Opinions like these were commonly held by the old settlers in the Missouri River counties, and it is not strange that the first settlers of Antelope County should have come here with their minds filled with doubts as to whether this country was fit to live in. Reports said that it was semi-desert. Its general appearance on examination showed that it was a fertile and productive country. The prevailing fear of the first settlers was, that the rainfall was frequently insufficient for the growth and maturity of farm crops.